Just thought of something.

[Cygnus]

I'm flying a mission and killing some time "floating" around the lower deck when I notice the view port on the hatch door has a great view of earth. As I move over to get a closer look, I can see the port wing. Almost the entire outer half. If the sim would let me, I could probably see the entire leading edge of it.

So the question for me is: Was there a real ability to look out the view port and if there was, why didn't anyone think to get the same view I did from the sim? If one could get a face up next to the hatch, they could have seen the damage before Columbia was lost.

btw- The mission I'm flying is STS-93. The shuttle is Columbia.

[Cygnus]

Hahahaha! 

I'm a tired astronaut. It was the leading edge of the payload bay door.

Please remove this post. 

[JLM]

they still wouldn't have been able to see it anyway, the damage was done to the starboard wing's leading edge.

[Spacewalker]

they still wouldn't have been able to see it anyway, the damage was done to the starboard wing's leading edge.

No. On STS-107, the damage was on Columbia's port wing leading edge.

[Cthulhus]

With the RMS and CAMs it was possible to view the damages (a part of them)... But they had not checked for some reason I do not understand. Takeoff was normal according to the NASA head office but some engineers had some doubts about that launch. And some have even tried to improve TV recordings. This procedure was unfortunately too long and we saw the terrible results well after the tragedy.

You can see a good documentary about that disaster on National Geo HD.

[christra]

STS-107 had no RMS on board. That is the reason why they couldn't check the wing.

[Cthulhus]

hum, so now I can understand ... bad that happened on a SPACELAB mission then...

[Spacewalker]

hum, so now I can understand ... bad that happened on a SPACELAB mission then...

It was Spacehab, not Spacelab, which are two different things. Actually STS-107 was the first and only mission of a so called Research Double Module (RDM). The other Spacehab modules used on missions were either Single, Logistic Single or Logistic Double Modules.

BTW: The damage check with the RMS cam is what they actually did on STS-27, when part of the nosecone of the starboard SRB broke off and hit Atlantis during launch.

[Cthulhus]

Thanks for the precision ! Bad luck in all case... 

[mborgia]

Another unfortunate happenstance of STS-107 is that the long range high definition tracking camera with the best view was set out of focus that day.  Video technicians could not clean it up sufficiently to get a good view of what the damage actually was.

On STS-27, NASA might have thought very differently about bringing Atlantis home had they also had sharper video of the damage to the Shuttle.